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After another late-game meltdown, Grant Balfouris officially out as closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, at least for now, and the Rays will go closer-by-committee for a little while. While no one player can doom an entire team, Balfour’s problems are one of the primary reasons the Rays have the worst record in baseball, especially given that Balfour’s $6 million salary is a larger share of Tampa’s budget than it would be for many of their competitors. But interestingly, Balfour isn’t really an outlier here. This year, nearly every team who spent resources to acquire a “proven closer” would have been better off lighting their money on fire instead.

While the definition of a “proven closer” is up for interpretation, I would suggest that seven relief pitchers changed teams last winter and were paid something of a premium due to their ninth inning experience. They are effective relievers and would have been valuable even without ninth inning experience, but their end-of-game history likely earned them a little more money than they would have had they been career setup men. Those seven, and their contracts, are listed below.

Six of them changed teams as free agents, while Johnson was traded in a salary dump by the Orioles, and was effectively available to any team who wanted to pay the amount he would get in his final trip through arbitration. Here’s how those seven pitchers have done this year, with their 2013 performance listed below for reference.

2014

IP

BB%

K%

GB%

HR/FB

LOB%

BABIP

ERA-

FIP-

xFIP-

WAR

RA9-WAR

Joaquin Benoit

27.2

6%

30%

34%

3%

82%

0.215

47

53

78

0.7

1.0

Fernando Rodney

23.2

10%

28%

44%

6%

80%

0.344

57

71

82

0.6

0.6

Brian Wilson

20.2

15%

25%

40%

15%

71%

0.345

175

147

123

-0.4

-0.7

Grant Balfour

23.2

19%

19%

49%

9%

62%

0.266

171

136

133

-0.4

-0.8

Jim Johnson

23.2

12%

15%

60%

7%

67%

0.386

167

112

116

0.0

-0.6

Edward Mujica

23.0

7%

15%

42%

18%

66%

0.320

160

136

110

-0.3

-0.5

Joe Nathan

23.0

11%

20%

38%

14%

59%

0.313

173

124

110

-0.2

-0.9

Total

165.1

11%

22%

44%

11%

69%

0.315

133

109

106

0.0

-1.9

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

2013

IP

BB%

K%

GB%

HR/FB

LOB%

BABIP

ERA-

FIP-

xFIP-

WAR

RA9-WAR

Joe Nathan

64.2

9%

29%

32%

3%

87%

0.224

33

54

83

2.5

3.5

Joaquin Benoit

67.0

8%

28%

42%

8%

87%

0.256

49

71

80

1.6

2.6

Grant Balfour

62.2

10%

28%

38%

11%

84%

0.263

67

91

86

0.6

1.5

Edward Mujica

64.2

2%

18%

45%

12%

86%

0.263

77

102

94

0.0

1.4

Jim Johnson

70.1

6%

19%

58%

11%

79%

0.327

72

85

85

0.9

1.5

Fernando Rodney

66.2

12%

28%

51%

7%

73%

0.298

89

75

79

1.3

0.7

Total

409.2

8%

25%

46%

9%

82%

0.274

63

79

84

7.1

11.8

As a group, they have been replacement level by FIP, and two wins worse than replacement level by runs allowed. Walks and homers are up, strikeouts are down, their low HR/FB% and BABIPs have regressed past the mean and are now worse than the league average, and the combination of hits and homers allowed have meant they haven’t been able to strand many of the copious amounts of baserunners they’re allowing. This group has been dreadful.

It says something about the group’s ineffectiveness when Fernando Rodney is the shining beacon of consistency. Benoit and Rodney look like Mariano Rivera next to the rest of these guys. Johnson and Balfour have already pitched their way out of the ninth inning, and at this rate, Joe Nathan isn’t far behind.

Interestingly, this mostly isn’t a case of old school GMs getting fooled by inflated save totals. The A’s, Rays, and Red Sox were all buyers on the list above, and each have previously been among the organizations to place the least amount of emphasis on ninth inning track records. In the case of the A’s and Rays, both had some money to spend in free agency but didn’t want to extend long commitments, and relief pitchers now offer one of the few places in free agency to spend money while sticking to one or two year commitments. As the closer disaster of 2014 shows, however, the “there’s no such thing as a bad one year deal” truism isn’t really true.

It’s just two months worth of performance, and these guys are likely going to perform much better over the rest of the season than they have so far, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was even more hesitancy to spend on relief pitching next winter. The price of proven closers has been steadily dropping over the last few years, and this dumpster fire of a performance isn’t going to help the flaky reputation of ninth inning specialists.